Have Banner, Will Travel
If I've got at least 2 people to hold this banner, I'll bring the guitar, the mic, and the sound gear.
I shall soon be the proud borrower of this banner. Anyone within 100 miles of Portland who wants to hold this banner while I play appropriate songs and people give appropriate speeches through my sound gear, hit me up! If you’re further away than that and have the means to get me to wherever you are, that’s fine, too.
On the left in that photo above that’s Al Glatkowski, of Veterans for Peace. He’s sending me the banner, which I think is a real honor. If you don’t know why I say that, I’ll share with you a song I wrote recently, Ballad of the Columbia Eagle, which is about Al and is also very relevant to the current moment, with another US-enabled genocidal war happening.
I posted the photo of Al and his comrade holding the banner on Facebook, and as if to demonstrate how concerned the supporters of Israel are about people in the US spreading sentiments like these, the post was besieged by the Hasbara trolls. Around 98% of the comments were from them, and they were blatantly pro-genocide, obviously racist, profoundly anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and full of lies and crude, dehumanizing rhetoric. In less than 24 hours there have been more than 4,000 comments on the post. I gave up on trying to block and delete all of these people after the first thousand or so. I’ve already blocked and deleted so many thousands of similar posts since late February, but there are always many more.
This obviously organized, presumably paid army of trolls were unleashed on me the day after the UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust wrote an email to the venue I was about to do a concert in in Leicester, England, threatening them with legal action if they didn’t cancel my appearance. I think the trolling campaign isn’t a coincidence.
On a related note, if you are in the UK or elsewhere and have been threatened or harassed or libeled by UK Lawyers for Israel in any capacity, and you can demonstrate this, I’m involved with potential legal action, regularly in touch with very sympathetic British lawyers, and I would love to hear from you!
Oh and here’s a song I wrote about UKLFI, in case you missed it.
Pacific Northwest: I'm looking forward to doing a concert on May 17th at the Edmonds Waterfront Center in Edmonds, just north of Seattle. After that, Vancouver, BC, Olympia, and PDX! At davidrovics.com/tour advance tickets are available for most gigs, but folks are welcome to just show up.
2 Beautiful new songs. Thank you for the reminder about Al. I remember reading about him when he went to jail for trying to save lives. He will remain a hero because of what he did and the poetry in your song. You are a true historian. The song about the UKLFI is so true. These folks will stop at nothing and nothing is out of bounds for them. The rest of us have to resist.
I'm quite encouraged by all the campus occupations... I'm thinking of writing something based on my own experience of Occupy combined with David Graeber's takeaways (especially in The Democracy Project)... could you point me towards any particularly insightful pieces about the campus occupation movement?